20 Not Quite Random Facts About Hermione Granger
by Willow-Bee the Cat
Summary: There were no heroes, not really. But Ron would always be Hermione's Guy Gardner.


Disclaimer: I neither own not make a profit from Harry Potter.

Rating: K+

Spoilers: All of Harry Potter, including epilogue.

Author's Note: I've been thinking about writing this for several months, but it took me a while to organize it into something cohesive. If you've read Paradoxicality, you'll recognize Danny.

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Twenty Not Quite Random Facts about Hermione Granger

1. Hermione was a lazy, withdrawn child. She cared little for school, less for her weekly art and music lessons. In fact, the only thing which had truly interested her were the comic books her mother continually threatened to throw out. She escaped for hours at a time, reading about Green Lantern-she loved Guy Gardner, for all his brain damaged idiocy and especially for how much of a jerk he was-although Green Lantern was a close second, if only because of his radical political views.

2. The only person Hermione disliked more than her annoying baby sister and the way Danny trailed after her like a lost puppy was how her parents nagged at her to _apply yourself to something, anything, damnit. You have so much potential, why don't you ever show it?_

3. Accidental magic was something Hermione tried to ignore. Really, she didn't see that door slam shut on her mother's face all on its own. No, she didn't see that daisy spontaneously bloom or that vase throw itself to the ground.

4. The Halloween after her ninth birthday, Hermione wished for nothing more than to be able to control her powers-the ones she pretended didn't exist-to actually do something useful. Why couldn't she be more like Guy Gardner? He'd find Danny and beat up the bad guys. They lived only three blocks from the school-she'd sent Danny home ahead of herself so she could hang out with her friends dozens of times before. Why had this one time been different?

5. The day they buried Danny-they had to have a closed casket because the police hadn't found all of her-Hermione put all her comic books into the grill and set them on fire. There were no superheroes. Heroes were only something people told their children about to give them hope in a dangerous world. Nobody was going to come and rescue little kidnapped girls.

6. Schoolwork was good-it made sense. It was possible to loose oneself in it for weeks at a time. The teachers were whispering about skipping her ahead a year… or two when the letter came. Even before Professor McGonagal came to explain, Hermione knew it was not a joke. She knew that she was going to go and learn to use the power she'd tried so hard to ignore. She was going to become so good with those powers-magic-that she could save everybody-and nobody was ever going to die because she was stupid and foolish and didn't follow the rules again.

7. Harry Potter didn't really impress Hermione. He and his little friend-Ron Weasley-were lazy and stupid and absolutely refused to apply themselves. Their foolish mischief was even worse, if only because they never thought of the consequences.

8. Ron's insult was not the main reason she ended up crying in that bathroom on Halloween. It had merely been the final straw of a horrible day-she hated Halloween. And when the troll came all Hermione could think was that she was going to die. And then Harry and Ron burst into the bathroom, just like Guy Gardner would have-alright, Guy probably would have gone in swinging, but the boys put about as much thought into their plan as Guy would have.

9. Harry and Ron and their crazy ideas always made Hermione feel like Dian Belmont to their Wesley Dodds and Sandy Hawkins. Although Harry had more courage than book smarts and Ron was too lazy to care about school and if he'd put half as much energy and effort into schoolwork as he did into Quidditch or chess he likely would have given Hermione a run for her money for the top student spot. And Hermione… she was smarter than either of her boys, yet when she followed them past Fluffy she felt stupid and helpless and why had she spent so much time studying magic when she couldn't even remember how to get past Devil's Snare or figure out how to defeat a chess board.

10. Hermione was awake and aware the entire time she was petrified. She never told anyone that was why after that, she was always twirling a quill or knitting or chewing her lip. She never told anyone that she couldn't stand to be still, though she was relatively sure Ron understood a decade later when he spent an afternoon calming Hermione after she was released from a body bind.

11. During her first three years Hermione fought hard against the urges to ignore the rules and the laws as Harry and Ron so often did. It was not until Fudge almost had an innocent man who'd not even received a trial the Dementor's Kiss that she gave in to said urges. Not that she told her boys that. They'd have run wild if they'd known she didn't quite feel the desire to follow the rules.

12. After all they had been through, Hermione couldn't quite understand how Ron could treat Harry that way. Surely he knew Harry well enough to know that he would have asked for his and Hermione's help if he's planned on entering himself. It took her a long time to forgive Ron. His actions during the Yule Ball didn't help matters.

13. Whenever Hermione thought of Dolores Umbridge, she felt a profound sense of satisfaction. Nobody hurt Harry and got away with it. Perhaps giving her to angry centaurs had been a bit extreme, but none of her other plans had involved as much danger and the possibility of permanent damage to the thoroughly unpleasant woman. Only thinking of how she'd blackmailed Rita Skeeter could bring the same feeling of distinct, smug satisfaction.

14. Hermione could never really bring herself to feel all that upset about Dumbledore's death. By that point, she'd known for several years that he was a puppet master and they the puppets. Only the knowledge that he'd intended Harry to die from the beginning kept her from ever forgiving him. In the end, Dumbledore was little better than Grindewald and Rita's book really was nowhere near as far off as Harry thought-but only Aberforth ever agreed with her on that-not that Hermione ever told Harry or Ron those thoughts.

15. The Grangers marriage had slowly been falling apart since the death of their younger daughter for nearly a decade, yet they remained together for the sake of a daughter who spent as little time around her mother's drinking and her father's over protectiveness as possible. Somehow she couldn't bring herself to be surprised when her mother took too many pills and a year later her father ate the muzzle of a gun he didn't legally possess. She lied to everybody she knew, saying they were in Australia under assumed names in the hopes that Death Eaters would put resources into finding them rather than looking for those who still lived.

16. Seventeen of those fighting against the Death Eaters during the Battle of Hogwarts used lethal spells. Fourteen were very disgruntled Ministry employees, the others were the Weasley matriarch, a curse breaker, and Hermione. Of those seventeen, Hermione managed to acquire the most kills. Kingsley was the only one who knew.

17. Hermione was one of nine volunteers-eight of which were Ministry Aurors and Hitwizards-who liberated Azkaban. She never spoke about what she saw, but Professor McGonagall found it telling that Hermione refused al twenty three job offers in favor of attending her seventh year of Hogwarts and taking the position of Head Girl to Neville's Head Boy.

18. Joining the Obliviators was something Hermione thought about long and hard, but in the end, she felt it the right choice. It was a deplorable, but necessary profession and she preferred that somebody responsible like herself fill it. She spent the entire time as an Obliviator on the look out for those who abused their position and protecting Muggles from unnecessary memory erasure.

19. Part of what drew Hermione to Ron was the knowledge that he was what she could have been had Danny not died. He was not, however, the love of her life. She was not in love with Ron, however she did love him, and that was enough for Hermione. She was of the opinion that in the long run, their strong friendship far more important that the passion of love which could so easily pass, leaving indifference or hatred in its place.

20. Every time Hermione looked at her children, she would think of the career in the Obliviators she'd given up to raise them. She'd think of Danny who'd not lived to see her sixth birthday. And then Hermione would think about the Wizarding who really had not changed all that much at all since her childhood. And when she awoke from nightmares about her babies fighting as she had at their age, Ron would hold her close as she cried herself back to sleep. Ron always made her feel safe when she was upset-he was her very own Guy Gardner.


End file.
